r narrative where the history of
modern Sweden takes its start. With the close of the war of independence
those features which mark the face of mediaeval Sweden disappear, and a
wholly new countenance gradually settles upon the land. Nor is this
transformation peculiar in any way to Sweden. Early in the sixteenth
century all Europe was passing from mediaeval into modern history. In the
Middle Ages there was but one criterion for every question that arose,
and that criterion was the past. Whatever had been, should continue. All
Church dogmas were settled by an appeal to the ancient Fathers; all
political aspirations were fought out on the basis of descent. Tradition
was the god of mediaeval Europe. At last, however, questions arose for
which tradition had no answer. On the Renaissance in Italy, on the
invention of printing and of gunpowder, on the discovery of America, the
ancient Fathers had not spoken. On these things, therefore, which raised
the greatest questions of the age, men had nothing for it but to do
their thinking for themselves. The practice thus evoked soon spread to
other questions, and gradually men grew bold enough to venture opinions
on certain stereotyped matters of religion. As all the world knows, the
Reformation followed, and from an age of blind acceptance Europe passed
to an age of eager controversy. Instead of searching to find out what
had been, men argued to determine what it was desirable should be. If
tradition was the characteristic of mediaeval, policy is the
characteristic of modern, history. Some old dogmas, like the divine
right of kings, still linger; but since the fifteenth century kings have
had little chance whose claims conflict with the balance of European
power.

The beginnings of modern history are inextricably bound up with the
beginnings of the Reformation. It is a common belief that the
Reformation in Europe worked a radical change in the doctrines of
religious men, raising up two parties with diametrically opposing
creeds. Such a conception, however, is misleading. The Reformation was
not so much a religious as a political revolt. It was the natural
outcome of a growth in the power of northern Germany at a moment when
Rome was losing her political prestige. The alliance between the German
Empire and the popes of Rome had its origin in a need of mutual
assistance. Western Europe consisted, at the accession of Charlemagne,
of many independent principalities at war among themsel